ncy
of her voice and her perfect intonation to render her execution
faultless, and its effect ravishing. She appeared to sing with the
volubility of a bird, and to experience the pleasure she imparted." To
use the language of a critic of that day: "All passages are alike to
her, but she has appropriated some that were hitherto believed to
belong to instruments--to the piano-forte and the violin, for instance.
Arpeggios and chromatic scales, passages ascending and descending,
she executed in the same manner that the ablest performers on these
instruments execute them. There were the firmness and the neatness
that appertain to the piano-forte, while she would go through a scale
_staccato_ with the precision of the bow. Her great art, however, lay
in rendering whatever she did pleasing. The ear was never disturbed by
a harsh note. The velocity of her passages was sometimes uncontrollable,
for it has been observed that in a division, say, of four groups of
quadruplets, she would execute the first in exact time, the second and
third would increase in rapidity so much that in the fourth she was
compelled to decrease the speed perceptibly, in order to give the band
the means of recovering the time she had gained."

Mile. Sontag was of middle height, beautifully formed, and had a face
beaming with sensibility, delicacy, and modesty. Beautiful light-brown
hair, large blue eyes, finely molded mouth, and perfect teeth completed
an _ensemble_ little short of bewitching. Her elegant figure and
the delicacy of her features were matched by hands and feet of such
exquisite proportions that sculptors besought the privilege of modeling
them, and poets raved about them in their verses. Artlessness and
_naivete_ were joined with such fine breeding of manner that it seemed
as if the blue blood of centuries must have coursed in her veins instead
of the blood of obscure actors, whose only honor was to have given
to the world one of the paragons of song. Sontag never aspired to the
higher walks of lyric tragedy, as she knew her own limitation, but in
light and elegant comedy, the _Mosinas_ and _Susannas_, she has never
been excelled, whether as actress or singer. It was said of her that she
could render with equal skill the works of Rossini, Mozart, Weber,
and Spohr, uniting the originality of her own people with the artistic
method and facility of the French and Italian schools. From Leipsic
Mile. Sontag went to Berlin, where the demonstratio